Advertising fails at math again

[snick_backup]

NuRoommate likes The Big Bang Theory. Thus far, I do not like The Big Bang Theory; not only is the depiction of nerdity totally alien to my experience and not a little offensive, but the one episode I saw managed to be offensive about Christians, too. I am not optimistic.

But. The packaging for season three has the following to say:

A love affair with Penny has opened a big, wide, wonderful world of romance for Leonard. But Sheldon likes the world just the way it was, thank you. All of which makes for a zany comic triangle for brainy, clueless Sheldon and practical, grounded Penny hilariously vying for role of hypotenuse.

Now, the hypotenuse is the long side of a right triangle (ie, a tringle with one square corner). So: Leonard-Penny-Sheldon vs. Leonard-Sheldon-Penny!

This second description sounds unlikely to me, based on what I know of American TV, but hey, that's the sitch, yo. The math says so. They're vying, even. WHICH WILL IT BE? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT.

(Fans of the show are welcome to weigh in now.)

Comments

[antennapedia.livejournal.com]

This is also a lovely reference to a Tom Lehrer song about the mathematician Lobachevsky,in which Ingrid Bergman plays part of hypotenuse. Points to them for knowing their nerd culture.

[snickfic]

Hmm, I think this might be giving the advertising folks too much credit, unless they pulled it straight from the show. But I did enjoy the video! I had no idea Tom Lehrer had every been mathematically inclined.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never had any desire to watch it either precisely because it doesn't resemble anything like the nerd culture I grew up in. I mean, it looks like it's relying on stereotypes of geeks instead of any knowledge about actual geeks, but then they throw in lots of cult references to prove how legit they are. Yawn.

[deird1]

...whereas it is exactly like the nerd culture I went to uni with. :)

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Hee!

I've been in female-dominated spaces for so long that that culture seems entirely mythic to me. And I do hate the way that the depictions of nerd culture leave out the fangirls, you know? I feel marginalized.

[snickfic]

You know, it isn't that I haven't been part of male-dominated nerd culture - hello, CS almost-minor! But even the worst of them were, if sometimes awkward and not attuned to the finest social cues, still people. They had three dimensions, even if one dimension was a bit thinner than the other two. From what I can tell, the guys on TBBT are pure caricature.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

I like it! I didn't at first, but the one Christmas episode charmed me. It was charming. Charming!

Granted, I just had to stop watching Glee because the Christmas stuff made my soul spasm in excruciating annoyance. :-)

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

That was me, failing to login. And I meant tonight's holiday episode of Glee.

[snickfic]

I think Glee and TBBT are both lost causes in my book. I just don't like anyone on either of them, you know? Like Arrested Development - I got through about fifteen minutes and gave up. I hated everyone.

[next_to_normal]

Like Arrested Development - I got through about fifteen minutes and gave up. I hated everyone.

OMG ME TOO. Everyone goes on and on about how it's the greatest, funniest show of all time, and I watched it and was just like, "What are you even talking about, best show ever? This is painful to watch!"

[snickfic]

*nods*

I have accepted that the intersection between my sense of humor and that of the world at large is very small. Alas. The last sitcom I liked was Malcolm in the Middle, and the next most recent would probably be M*A*S*H. So.

[next_to_normal]

LOL! I am slightly more mainstream than you, apparently, because I do like a few current sitcoms. But most of them? Bleh.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I am close to giving up on Glee, which is sad, because I enjoyed (most of) the first season. I hated the concept of TBBT, but then I got hooked. Of course, then I discovered Community, so TBBT has been relegated to "watch it on the Internet sometime when I get around to it" status.

I can't agree on Arrested Development, though. I still think it's one of the best comedies ever aired. The ensemble alone ...

[snickfic]

I loved the concept of Glee - singing, every week! - but something about the approach (which I've heard described as black comedy) turned me off pretty fast. I think it's just a failure in taste on my part. I want to be able to sympathize with the characters, and the show seemed determined that I wouldn't.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I think Glee started out as something of a dark comedy ... I don't know what it is anymore. I'm not sure the show knows what it is anymore. If you want a lesson in how not to write characters, it's extremely informative. There very little continuity; the characters change each week to service the story. Only, the story doesn't make a whole lotta sense, either. I keep sticking around for one character (Kurt). :p

[angearia.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of how I started watching Psych with my roommate and I wanted to KILL IT WITH FIRE because of the sexism embedded in the story. Blerg.

I'm also not a great fan of TBBT for the reasons you state.

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

Was that the stolen-wedding-ring episode, by chance? Because I sure watched it last night and had to roll my eyes.

[deird1]

This reminds me of how I started watching Psych with my roommate and I wanted to KILL IT WITH FIRE because of the sexism embedded in the story. Blerg.

I would love to hear you elaborate on this, if you feel inclined...

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I started watching Season 1 with a friend, marathoning it on Netflix, and we watched the first season together.

And I became really, really uncomfortable with the way the female detective, O'Hara, was the butt of the jokes (there were instances where she was portrayed and treated as less competent than the male con artist kooks when she's the cop); I'm uncomfortable with the way women in general were positioned in the narrative. It felt like a show written from a position of white male privilege without any real awareness of how the jokes come across to people who are marginalized.

Mostly, it was that I got a huge ick feeling. It could be that I felt the main characters were treating the women this way and the show wasn't calling them on it, but instead holding it up as something funny. And mostly I didn't want to laugh at women that way.

The show alienated me. I'd much rather go watch "The Good Wife" where women are strong and worthy of being protagonists themselves. It's something I've come to realize recently, that my favorite shows and stories treat women as powerful. That my favorite characters recognize women as powerful and worthy of respect.

But I have to admit, my impressions are hazy because I started mentally checking out as my friend continued watching and I started letting myself be distracted by the internet. So I can't cite specific instances.

[deird1]

...see, this is why you should watch lots of Castle. *nods*

(And I totally agree.)

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Yes, Castle is the answer. I love Beckett and Castle's relationship. And even while Castle is clearly at the heart of the show, he's surrounded by women every way he turns. Strong, powerful women.

(Oh good. I wasn't sure if I'd offended. It's not one of those opinions I've through through much so I'm glad it makes sense.)

[deird1]

*nods*

Quite apart from the fact that it's a really fun show, it's also a show with:
- two major characters who are black
- one who's Hispanic
- four who are women
- one woman who frequently bests the main guy AND NO-ONE THINKS THAT'S STRANGE
- women who are all competent in their own way, interesting in their own way, and not at all cookie-cutter


*loves*

[snickfic]

Psych is another one that drives me crazy because the characters feel OTT to me, but I hadn't caught onto the mysogyny. Hmm.

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to say I've known a bunch of near-Sheldons and very-much-Leonards in my life. Then again, TBBT is based on my alma mater. The writers are drawing on the same tiny sub-population of nerds that I knew.


The show is a very VERY guilty pleasure for me. Since the creators are also responsible for Two And A Half Men, there's a bad streak of misogyny that often surfaces in the writing. But the few recurring female characters are well-cast, and the actors raise them above the level of common stereotype.

[snickfic]

Oh, I loathe Two and a Half Men with the passion of... something very hot. Loathe! It now makes much more sense why I've been bouncing off TBBT so hard.

Although, honestly, I just don't find 'funny' things funny, most of the time. Apparently my sense of humor is weird and idiosyncratic.

[next_to_normal]

Am I the only one who thought the people in the triangle were the points, not the sides??? Because the relationships are the lines connecting them, right? So nobody could be the hypotenuse because the hypotenuse is a relationship, not a person!

...or am I crazy?

(I have no comment on TBBT because I've never watched it.)

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

I did wonder that...but figured I'm probably missing some context.

[snickfic]

Nope. This is the blurb on the back of a DVD; I'm pretty sure what I quoted is all the context you're going to get, unless it's an in-joke pulled from the series itself.

[snickfic]

That's what I always thought! It's a network or a tree or what have you, with people as the nodes. So I have no idea what this business is, except that people who write DVD packaging blurbs don't know enough math. (Don't even get me started about describing a single piece of data as being "exponentially more" than another piece of data. Argh!)

[next_to_normal]

You will probably appreciate that after I commented, I mentally formulated an entire geeky meta about the structure of love triangles and how best to represent them geometrically. :)

And every way I came up with (and there were at least three), the DVD blurb STILL DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

[snickfic]

NO IT DOESN"T. (I'm glad someone will geek out with me about the ridiculousness of that blurb! I was beginning to think I'd underexplained the very silly math, because no one else was talking about it.)

[next_to_normal]

Would you like to hear my theories? I know you do!

So, there are two options - (1) the people are the points and the relationships are the sides, or (2) the people are the sides and the relationships are the angles.

Option 1 provides us with the benefit of relative measurement - the distance between the points is relative to the closeness of the relationship - i.e. a short line indicates a very close relationship, whereas a longer line indicates a more distant one.

This allows us to utilize three different types of triangles:

First, you have a scalene triangle - let's use the example of Buffy/Angel/Xander in early BtVS. Buffy/Angel would be the shortest line, because they are romantically (and eventually sexually) involved. Buffy/Xander would be a slightly longer line, because they are friends and the attraction is one-sided. And Angel/Xander would be a really, really long line because they kind of hate each other. :)

If you really wanted a hypotenuse (as the DVD blurb seems to), you could make it a right triangle, with the person caught in the middle at the right angle. Of course, that puts the hypotenuse as the relationship between Penny and Sheldon, which isn't like something they'd be "vying for" at all.

Then, there is the isosceles triangle, which represents one character equally torn between two people. This has the flexibility of allowing the two love interests to have a distant relationship OR having a closer relationship with each other than with the object of their shared affection. This is useful, since it's often a competition between best buds for the same girl - see Wes/Fred/Gunn, for example.

The final type is the equilateral triangle, in which all three relationships are equal, and occasionally leads to threesomes. This one is often controversial, because shippers will argue that one relationship is stronger than the other two. :) But objectively, a strong argument could be made for any leg of the triangle, making them relatively equal, e.g. Buffy/Angel/Spike.

[snickfic]

Dude. How fabulous are you? You are VERY FABULOUS. There is math! And Buffy! At the same time!

I love the distinction between the different kinds of triangles. Every time I ever hear about triangles, I'm going to remember this!

[next_to_normal]

Hahaha, clearly this is an excuse to incorporate Buffy into math class (why should the social sciences have all the fun?). I'm sure an explanation of the relationships would help people remember which triangle is which!

[next_to_normal]

Option two is to use the people as lines and the angles as relationships. The only real usefulness is that you could use the length of the lines to illustrate similarity - the people in the relationship will have the same length line, while the odd one out would be a different length (isosceles triangle). In this case, the blurb is completely wrong, since the hypotenuse would be the undesirable position, so there's no reason to be vying for it.

Again, you could use an equilateral triangle for three equal competing relationships.

But clearly, option one is superior!

[next_to_normal]

Oh, hey, html fail...